


our filthy hands can wash one another

by nikkiRA



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, all i do with my life now is write fics that pretend civil war never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 19:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15347277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: The Asset did not have a countdown, because the Asset did not have a left arm, but even when he did, he had not had a countdown. That is what they told him, and it did not occur to him until much later that maybe they had been lying. Countdowns meant soulmates, and the Asset did not have a soul.Did I ever have numbers? Did they take that from me too? Did I have a countdown on my arm that stopped the minute I saw you? They told me I never had a countdown and I believed them because someone like me doesn’t deserve a soulmate but if it was you I’m willing to be selfish and have you anyway, even though I don’t deserve you. I just don’t know how you can have a soulmate without having a soul, but I need you so much I’m willing to find out.





	our filthy hands can wash one another

**Author's Note:**

> title from soul meets body by death cab for cutie because.... yeah obviously

The Asset did not have a countdown, because the Asset did not have a left arm, but even when he did, he had not had a countdown. That is what they told him, and it did not occur to him until much later that maybe they had been lying. Countdowns meant soulmates, and the Asset did not have a soul.

He knew what the countdown was, because he was briefed on it every time they woke him up. Occasionally it played a role in the missions, but mostly it was so the Asset was prepared when he saw numbers imprinted onto the skin of the people around him. His handlers always ran through it quickly: almost everyone had a countdown, although occasionally people were born without it. The numbers were there from birth – it was a countdown to the moment when you would meet your soulmate. The person you were destined to be with.

The Asset didn’t know what that mean. He had a handler once, a pretty thing, who tried to explain soulmates to him. _It’s like meeting someone and feeling complete. It’s knowing that they will be with you forever. That they’ll love you no matter what. It’s unconditional. It’s the greatest feeling in the world._

He didn’t understand, and she was killed not long after. She spoke to him like a person, after all, and the Asset was not a person. They couldn’t have him getting ideas.

The Asset does not give much thought to countdowns or soulmates until he is staring at the beaten, battered face of his mission, up on the Helicarrier. His mission will not fight back, and the Asset does not understand why. He’s going to fail, and it always hurt when he failed. Pain like he could never imagine. He didn’t want to fail.

The mission pulls the sleeve of his left arm up. The numbers on his arm are all at zero. The Asset does not understand why he is showing him this. He does not understand why it causes his heartrate to increase. He does not understand why seeing this _hurts._

“Bucky,” the mission says. The Asset does not know why the mission keeps calling him this. The mission suddenly eyes the metal arm with understanding. His face is horrified. “Your arm… they took your arm. So you don’t know… God, Buck –”

The Asset punches him again. He does not want the mission to keep talking, does not want him to keep calling the Asset by that name, does not want him talking about the Asset’s arm. He wants to cut those numbers off the mission’s arm. He doesn’t want to see them. Seeing them hurts. Why does seeing them hurt?

“I’m not going to fight you,” the mission says. He is bleeding heavily from the lip and nose. One of his eyes is swollen shut. He has been shot multiple times. Anyone else should be dead. Instead the mission is still standing, albeit wobbly. He has thrown his shield away. The Helicarrier is crashing, and the mission’s numbers are at zero. The Asset does not know why that is the thing he is so focused on.

“I’m not going to fight you,” he says again. The Asset punches him again, and again, until they both tumble to the floor. The Asset is on top of the mission, and he keeps hitting him, again and again. He wants him to hit back. He grabs the mission’s left arm, tries to stab through the numbers there, but he can’t force his knife down. “Bucky –”

“My name isn’t Bucky,” the Asset says. He grips the mission’s arm, touches those numbers on his wrist. He wants to claw them off. He never wants to see them again.

“Your name is Bucky Barnes,” the mission says thickly. “You’re my –” The Asset’s fingers clench involuntarily on the mission’s wrist.

“I have to kill you,” the Asset says, a hint desperately.

“Then do it,” the mission says. “Do it, if you have to. But I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, Buck.”

At first he thinks the words caused the world to upend, but it’s just the Helicarrier finally breaking apart. His mission falls into the Potomac below, and the Asset watches, clinging on with his hand, and that should be it. That is his mission, completed.

_The man on the bridge. I know him._

The Asset lets go.

* * *

He pulls Steve Rogers out of the Potomac, lays him out on the bank. He kneels next to him and runs his fingers over the countdown on his left arm. _00:00:00._ He looks at his own arm, the metal one, but it doesn’t occur to him yet that he might have lost more than just his arm.

He hides until someone comes and takes Steve Rogers to safety.

* * *

He knows what he should do. He should head to one of Hydra’s prearranged spots, wait for his handlers to come. They will punish him for failing, and then they will wipe him. He almost wants it. Wants to forget whatever it is that is causing this involuntary reaction, the involuntary pressure in his chest when he thinks of Steve Rogers and those zeroes on his wrist. But he does not want to go back to them; that much he knows.

Instead he breaks into a house, steals some clothes out of the drawer, washes his face and hair in the sink (the shower is too confined, too empty. It makes everything echo. He does not like the shower). Then he steals some food, too, gorges himself on things he didn’t even know existed, things so much richer and more flavorful than whatever Hydra injected into his veins, and he eats so much that he throws it all right back up. Then, absurdly, he cleans it up, because he has the thought that it will be bad enough for this family to come home and find their house broken into, their food all gone – he doesn’t want them to have to clean up his mess, either.

When he’s finished cleaning up he grabs a couple pieces of bread for the way. Then he steals a backpack from a closet and piles some things in it – some more food, a couple bottles of water, some more clothes. Some long dead part of him wishes he could leave some money.

He leaves, steals a motorbike off of someone. Finds an abandoned building and sets up with the other homeless people there. He doesn’t sleep, but he tries, and when someone tries to steal his bag he strangles them with his metal arm. No one else bothers him after that.

* * *

He sneaks into the hospital. Steve Rogers is hooked up to a myriad of machines, but he is healing. The swelling in his face is practically gone. Sam Wilson, codename Falcon, is asleep in a chair next to him.

The Asset lifts Sam Wilson’s sleeve. _00:00:00._ The Asset looks from Wilson to Rogers and feels a little sick.

* * *

Something deep in the Asset’s scrambled brain tells him to locate a woman named Peggy Carter. He doesn’t know who she is, or why her name sticks out in his mind, but he locates her and breaks into her hopsital room and finds her sleeping. He had not expected her to be old. Her countdown is at zero, too. He thinks this might be meaningful. He thinks he hates this Peggy Carter, although he isn’t sure why.

* * *

He goes to the Smithsonian. He buys things with the wad of cash he had stolen off a tourist. Something in the back of his mind tells him that he should find how expensive everything is now absolutely unbelievable. He’s not sure why. The Asset does not find anything remarkable about coffee costing five dollars, but the voice in his scrambled head who he is beginning to understand is Bucky Barnes, fighting to get out, finds it absolutely _horrifying._

He buys a little bear in the gift shop. He’s not sure why, except it’s called a Bucky Bear and he feels the strangest sense of calm when he has it. He stuffs it in his backpack and heads to the Captain America exhibit. It’s completely crowded; the amount of people has him anxious, but he has a feeling he’ll find answers here.

He reads every single thing there is about Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America. He had been hoping for some kind of revelation, some kind of cosmic realignment, one single moment when he suddenly understood who he was and who his mission was and why those numbers meant so much. He doesn’t get one singular moment, but he gets a bunch of answers, even though they only serve to confuse him more. He sees pictures of Steve Rogers before he became big and they fight with the image of him now, and he has trouble merging them in his mind. And then he finds the section on him, or on who he used to be, and that only makes his head hurt. He stares at the picture and he thinks maybe he can see the resemblance, if he shaved, if he cut his hair, if he got some proper sleep, if he stopped looking over his shoulder for ghosts, but he doesn’t really recognize the handsome man in the pictures.

And then he reads a sentence that causes the world to spin:

_Although it has never been confirmed, it is widely believed that James Barnes was Steve Rogers soulmate; the two never mentioned it, and even after Captain Rogers was recovered from the ice he has remained tight lipped about it, but sources close to them say that as long as they knew the two of them, their countdowns were always at zero. The only person present when Barnes and Rogers met for the first time was Bobby O’Haligan, who was, “too busy getting the teeth kicked out of me by Barnes to notice whether their [redacted] clocks had stopped.” It should be noted that O’Haligan admits that the only reason Barnes was fighting him was because he had been “kicking the [redacted] out of Rogers. I was a mean kid, but at least I get to tell everybody I beat up Captain America.”_

The Asset – James – Bucky – Barnes – whatever or whoever he is – he runs from the Smithsonian as fast as he can.

* * *

He goes back to the exhibit every day, reads that sentence over and over. He watches an interview with Margaret Carter (“Steve wasn’t my soulmate. When I met him his clock was already at zero, and mine was still counting. I still liked him, of course – no one ever said dating outside of your soulmate was against the rules, and he never once mentioned anyone to me, although later on I had my suspicions. But my clock stopped when I met my husband, and although I still loved Steve, it was different”) and feels a little better about her zeroes, although he still can’t pinpoint why.

(The last part of the interview has the interviewer asking who she had her suspicions about. Peggy had given him a dry look and told him he wasn’t much of a journalist if he didn’t know. The AssetJamesBuckyBarnes thinks he must have been wrong, when he thought he hated Peggy Carter. He sends her flowers.

He sends Wilson a steering wheel, too, because he’s beginning to think that he used to have a sense of humour, and he thinks maybe it will make Steve Rogers smile, and that, for some reason, seems important.)

* * *

Rogers and Wilson are following him. He knows this because they aren’t very good at it.

Barnes has decided that the safest way to ensure that he doesn’t get taken by Hydra again is by burning Hydra to the ground and killing every last member. He has decided that he doesn’t like killing people, but Hydra aren’t people, and he doesn’t feel bad about killing them at all.

Rogers and Wilson are trying to catch up with him, which is funny considering they only know where he is when he lets them. He’s not sure why he lets them, but he thinks that making Steve Rogers happy was his original mission, and he’s never liked failing.

Sometimes he doubles back just to watch them pick through the remains of whatever Hydra base he had hit. Wilson always looks begrudgingly impressed.

“He’s definitely got this whole vengeance thing down,” Wilson says, surveying the wreckage. Rogers purses his lips. Barnes can’t tell if he’s disappointed in him or not. For some reason, he really doesn’t want Rogers to be disappointed in him.

So at the next base, after he’s killed everyone and torched it to the ground, he leaves a note:

_Don’t be mad, Steve,_ he writes. _I know you don’t like killing, but I don’t think your moral laws count when it’s Nazi’s._

The words come easily to him, easier than he had thought, and he begins writing more, because the words flow from his brain to the paper smoothly, and he finds writing helps him remember things, finds himself writing things down as if he’d never forgotten them. He uses the notebook that he had bought at the Smithsonian, the one that has the picture of Steve Rogers in it, and sometimes he leaves these notes for Steve, but sometimes he finds words pouring out of him that are too personal for that. He always addresses them to Steve, though. He finds the words don’t come as easily when he doesn’t pretend it’s Steve he’s telling them to.

_Steve:_

_I’m remembering that I hate being cold. At first I thought it was just because of cryo but I’m starting to remember that I used to be cold before, too, before the war, and I used to have to curl around you at night because your breath always rattled around in your chest and some nights I stayed awake the whole time because I was afraid that if I fell asleep I’d wake up to you still as death in my arms. I remember after they injected you with whatever the hell it was you got big and warm, like a goddamn space heater, and mostly I was happy but – and I never told you this – I was a little upset, too, because I was afraid that meant you didn’t need me anymore._

_Do you know about cryo? Do you know about what they did to me? I hope not, because you’ll get that sad look on your face and I always hated that look._

* * *

_Steve:_

_My brain is getting less jumbled by the day. I’m remembering a lot more. I remember your ma and my ma and how you always used to get sick during the winter and how we barely had enough to rub two dimes together. I remember how you always used to get into fights, I remember we used to go to Coney Island, I remember how you moved in with me after your ma passed._

_I remember a bunch of other things, too, but I don’t know if I’m remembering right and I don’t want to write them down because I’m afraid they’re not true, and I really want them to be true._

_I think the nation should probably be concerned that Captain America is so bad at stealth missions. I can always see you coming from a mile away, Steve, although maybe it’s just that I could always see you, no matter where I was._

* * *

_~~Steve:~~ _

_~~Did I ever have numbers? Did they take that from me too? Did I have a countdown on my arm that stopped the minute I saw you? They told me I never had a countdown and I believed them because someone like me doesn’t deserve a soulmate but if it was you I’m willing to be selfish and have you anyway, even though I don’t deserve you. I just don’t know how you can have a soulmate without having a soul, but I need you so much I’m willing to find out.~~ _

_~~I have memories of us together, of the way you tasted and how it felt to be inside of you and the way you looked when you came and how I always had to sync our breathing together after so you didn’t have an asthma attack, and if nothing else in my head is true I hope those are, because I need them to be.~~ _

_~~Even if I never had a countdown, or even if I did and it stopped for someone else, some schmuck who’s long dead and doesn’t have to see the monster I became, my whole goddamn self is a countdown for you, anyway. Every part of me is wired for you. And if I was meant for someone else I’m glad they took my arm, because I don’t want to know. I choose you even if fate doesn’t like it.~~ _

* * *

(He leaves that one in his journal, too embarrassed to ever let Steve see it.)

* * *

He follows Steve and Wilson to their hotel, waits for Wilson to head down to the pool, then heads to their room. He stands outside the door for a few minutes, trying to force himself to knock.

He’s not sure what happened, what caused him to finally reach out, but he’s been running from them for months, now. He thinks maybe he had been waiting for Steve to give up, to leave, to realize he wasn’t worth the effort. But Steve was still here, so Bucky thinks that –

And well, even if he’s wrong, he needs to know. He dreams of zeroes every night.

He knocks.

“I asked three times if you had your key –”

Steve opens the door, sees him standing there, and freezes. Bucky wants to tell Steve that he can touch him, because he knows Steve wants to and because he’s been imagining it since he got most of his memories back, how nice it would feel to be back in Steve’s arms, but he doesn’t know how to form the words. So instead he just stands there and waits for Steve to speak. When Steve doesn’t, he manages to say, “You gonna let me in, Rogers?”

This spurs Steve into action. “I – Christ, yeah, I – _Bucky,_ you – you’re – Jesus.”

“Sister Mary’s rolling in her grave,” Bucky mutters as he moves into the room. Steve just stares at him with his mouth hanging open.

“You remember Sister Mary?”

“After all those times she told me I was gonna burn? How could I forget?”

Bucky studies the room. Two exits, the door and the window, but it’s the fifth floor and the window will hurt. Wilson’s side of the room is neat enough that it almost looks like Steve is here alone, whereas Steve has shit piled all around. Bucky shakes his head and kicks at a pile of clothes.

“You’ve been here for six hours, Rogers, Jesus.”

“I – I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

“Yeah? What was your excuse in 1940?”

Steve is looking at him like he kind of wants to cry. “Bucky…”

“My arm,” he says, cutting Steve off. “Did I…” He takes a breath. He needs the answer, but he’s afraid of it. “The Smithsonian exhibit. It said it was never confirmed, who your soulmate was.”

Steve smiles and takes a hesitant step closer. “Can I touch you?”

Bucky nods, and Steve reaches out and grabs the metal arm, running his fingers up and down the plates. “What did they tell you? About your countdown?”

There is no feeling in his metal arm, but there is pressure, and even just the pressure of Steve after so long is causing his head to spin. He shivers. He can’t remember the last time he had done that. He had gotten used to the cold from cryo, because they hadn’t liked it when he shivered. Weapons don’t get cold. When was the last time he had been touched by another human without the intention of harm?

He can’t remember.

“Do you want to sit down?”

No – sitting was bad. Sitting meant pain. Sitting meant a machine on his head and rubber in his mouth so he didn’t bite through his tongue.

But it’s Steve, and Steve won’t hurt him. He never had. He trusts Steve. It is an instinct he didn’t know he had, because he thought the only instincts he had were to kill.

Steve sees his hesitation. “We don’t have to sit,” he says, but Bucky (and when did he start thinking of himself as Bucky again? He had only just gotten comfortable with Barnes, but he felt like Bucky around Steve, even if he wasn’t sure who that really was yet) sits down anyway. He’s trying to be a person – he’s trying to be Bucky Barnes, or some version anyway, and Bucky Barnes wasn’t afraid of sitting.

“What did they tell you? About your countdown?”

“They said I never had one.”

Steve looks angry, and Bucky almost flinches away before a voice in his head tells him that it isn’t Bucky that Steve is mad at. It’s a part of him that he had thought had been erased, the part of him that knew Steve Rogers better than he knew himself. _He’s not mad at you, he’s mad at them._

“They lied,” Steve says, voice tight. He is still holding Bucky’s arm, thumb stroking absentmindedly over the metal plates, where the countdown would have been. It feels – not nice, exactly, but it _feels,_ a soft pressure on the arm as Steve touches it gently, reverently, as if it weren’t a weapon. As if Steve loved it just by virtue of being a part of Bucky. “They lied. You had a timer.”

“What happened?” He asks softly. “Tell me, please.” He wants to know, but there’s also some part of him that is afraid that Steve is going to tell him that it had stopped for someone else. He has the memories back, but part of him thinks he’s remembering it wrong, he has to be.

But wouldn’t that be better? If he weren’t so selfish, that should be what he hoped for. For a soulmate who was long dead and didn’t have to deal with the way he had been unmade. And Steve – Steve deserves better. Steve deserves the best, always has, deserves a whole person instead of the fractured parts that he was now, someone who didn’t think in exit strategies and fighting stats. Someone who could look at him and just see _him,_ instead of what Bucky sees: 6’0’’, 200 pounds, advanced strength, accelerated healing, proficient in hand to hand combat, threat level high.

(There’s another part of him that looks and sees differently: 5’4’’ 100 pounds soaking wet, runs his mouth, sick a lot, little punk, smiles when he kisses. These two contradicting versions fight for dominance in his scrambled head. Steve is both a threat and someone to protect. It is difficult to make sense of. Except – Steve is never a threat. Bucky is the threat.

His head hurts.)

Steve deserves a better soulmate, but Bucky is selfish. He doesn’t think he’s always been selfish; he has vague memories of skipping meals so Steve would have more to eat, or working extra hours so Bucky could treat him to something special, to a trip to the cinemas or Coney Island, of staying up with his sisters, letting them dance on his feet when he had been working all day and just wanted to lie down. But he’s selfish now. Maybe 70 years ago he would have given Steve up, but he’s not that person anymore.

“It was 1927,” Steve says. “Bobby O’Haligan was beating the shit out of me because I told him to stop being rude to Mrs. Reilly. Kept talking about that extra toe she was rumoured to have. I told him to shut his big trap, he punched me in the face –”

Bucky rolls his eyes. It feels natural. “I remember,” he says, because he does, the barest hint of memory. “You were afraid Bobby O’Haligan was your soulmate.”

Steve smiles, big and bright, like Bucky’s own personal sun. “Yeah, I did. You had to drag him over so I could see that his timer was still counting down before I finally believed you. You just seemed too good to be true. But anyway, I was curled up in a ball protecting myself, and you come along and tell Bobby to sod off. Bobby told you to mind your own business, and you kicked him in the nuts. Then, instead of helping me up and introducing yourself, you grabbed my arm so you could see for yourself.”

“So it’s you,” he says hoarsely. “My soulmate is you?”

Steve’s grip on his arm tightens. “From the very beginning, Buck. You and me. We were fucking meant for each other.”

Bucky crumples. He’s not sure what does it after so long. If it’s the relief or the guilt or the way Steve says that like it’s the only truth that matters. He falls forward into Steve, grips his left wrist and the zeroes that are marked there. Steve touches him carefully, like he’s afraid Bucky might break.

“I don’t know if I’m him anymore,” he mumbles into Steve’s neck. “The one your timer stopped for. I think they took my soul along with everything else. I’m not the same guy. So I mean – I won’t blame you, if you don’t… don’t feel obligated because 70 years ago your timer ran out for a guy who looked like me. Who even knows if your timer would stop for me like this?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Steve says severely. “I don’t need you to be who you were 70 years ago. I want you. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Bucky makes a face. “Don’t be a sap.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying what’s true. You’re my goddamn soulmate, Buck. My life was counting down to the very second I met you. You’ve been marked on my skin. I love every version of you.”

What had that one handler said? Unconditional? He had never understood, not until this moment, Steve sitting across from him, his sins laid out between them, the awful truth of all that he had done for so many years, and Steve telling him he wanted him anyway. That Steve could look at the monster he was and love him anyway – it made his head spin. It made his chest hurt.

“I’ve killed a lot of people, Steve.”

“So have I.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t try to make it equal. Don’t compare your collateral damage to me staring children and innocent people in the face and pulling the trigger.”

Steve looks sad, but he doesn’t argue, which means Bucky is right. “Can I touch you?”

Bucky nods, because he’s mostly sure that he won’t hurt Steve anymore. Steve lifts a hand and traces the line of Bucky’s jaw, runs his hand over Bucky’s tangled hair. “I need to shower,” he says self-consciously. Steve shakes his head.

“You’re perfect,” he says quietly.

“I haven’t bathed properly since the fucking war, Stevie.” The nickname slips out of him easily, and Steve lights up, grins at him in a way that leaves Bucky breathless.

“You can use the shower here if you’d like. It’s not very big, though. A little cramped.”

Bucky can’t help it – he leans forward and places a kiss swiftly to the side of Steve’s mouth. Because God, Steve’s so good, so smart, he understands Bucky so well, even after so long – to tell him that the shower was small, that it was cramped, to know that Bucky would feel uncomfortable in such a cramped space, and Bucky can’t help it, has held himself back for so long. Steve makes a happy little noise and Bucky decides that he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to make Steve make that noise again. That can be his penance, his atonement. Maybe he can be forgiven for all his crimes, if he can just make Steve happy.

“What was that for?”

“You’re the one thing they weren’t able to take from me. Not fully. I didn’t know my own goddamn name but I knew you.”

Steve drags him in again, wraps his arms around him tightly, places his lips next to Bucky’s ear. “You’re home now, Buck. You’re safe.”

He hasn’t been safe in over 70 years, but he doesn’t tell Steve that. And he doesn’t tell Steve that he’s not sure how to be safe, and he doesn’t tell him that he has all the exits of this hotel memorized, or that he never sleeps more than three hours at a time. For now he’s just focusing on the circle of Steve’s arms. His lips on Bucky’s ear are causing goosebumps to erupt all over his body, and he’s pretty sure Steve knows it, the bastard.

“I don’t have anywhere to stay,” he says, because he doesn’t want to be presumptuous. Steve laughs.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Steve says. “Of course you do.”

“Took me weeks to convince you to move in with me,” Bucky says. “Why do you assume I’m gonna give in so easily?”

Steve pulls back, and Bucky smiles faintly to let him know he was playing. Steve huffs out a laugh and leans forward, kissing him properly for the first time. His lips are chapped, and he’s smiling. Bucky is transported back, as if nothing had ever changed, just two boys from Brooklyn whose souls were crafted for each other.

The door opens, and that flashback is ruined, because Bucky is on his feet with his gun pulled faster than you can blink. Sam Wilson stares at him looking rather nonplussed, two coffees in his hand.

“Uh,” Steve says, standing up and putting a placating hand on the small of Bucky’s back. “I found Bucky.”

“I only got two coffees, man,” Sam says, walking into the room as if there wasn’t an ex-Russian assassin pointing a gun at him. Bucky puts his gun down. Steve presses his nose into Bucky’s hair.

For the first time in over 70 years, Bucky can finally breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @aravenlikeawritingdesk


End file.
